


Chasing Smoke

by Merixcil



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Blow Jobs, Cannibalism, Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares, Dubious Consent, Handcuffs, Injury, Knifeplay, Knives, M/M, Obsessive Behavior, Vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 15:40:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10282331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: There's something in the air, something's coming. Bruce intends to be prepared, even if no one else can see the signs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please check the tags on this before reading on, this goes to some very dark places
> 
> Clarification on the 'dubious consent' tag - it's used here because a person is trying to reject a sexual fantasy they are being offered in a dream

“There are four hundred and fifty nine reasons to be anywhere else but here. Reasons. Real reasons. Count them on one hand, squash them down till they fit between your fingers, till they don’t look like something worth sacrificing your dignity for. Breathe in deep, hold them in, it’s really not so hard you silly goose you’ve just got to want it bad enough. You’re overthinking things, here, let me get that for you.”

Bruce Wayne is alone in his bed, alone in this wing of the manor. Maybe he’ll get up and get dressed and Alfred will be gone, Dick won’t pick up the phone, Tim will run for cover because he won’t be able to find the right words, Babs will have too much else on her plate, Damien will be too angry to speak, Selina will have skipped town in a not so rare fit of self-preservation.

Except they won’t, they never do. They don’t know the half of it, and explaining himself would be awful. Bruce’s fingers twist in sheets that cost the Earth until they tear. He’s always liked the feel of fraying silk, its soft and decadent fibres unravelling beneath fake manicures, nails bitten to the quick. Complete it is a warming and uncannily durable fabric, the fibres woven so close together it’s almost impossible for the wind to whip through the wearer. He’s not wearing silk this morning though, not even his pyjamas. Bruce sleeps between the sheets, he doesn’t get involved.

Alfred is there because Alfred is always there, appearing at Bruce’s shoulder as he makes his way to the Cave. He passes over the morning papers and a cup of Earl Grey spiked with fresh lemon. He waits till Bruce is seated before the computer bank before setting down a bowl of oatmeal. Just like his father used to make.

Bruce isn’t sure which father they’re talking about anymore. He thanks his butler, but not in any way that matters. They don’t talk about all the mornings there shouldn’t have been a second person in the house, surely. It’s a full time job, that much is true, but it’s hard to believe it’s worth Alfred’s life.

Sweet Alfred who talks in dry wit and unheard advice. Wise Alfred who’s temper cracks against the hard outer shell of Bruce’s pride. Poor, stupid Alfred who makes breakfast every morning like this shit was ever in his job description.

Alone at last Bruce opens up the computer and half a dozen news streams. He calls Jim Gordon as Batman and feels his stomach drop away when there is nothing to report. A handful of cases of petty theft from the night before, nothing the police can’t handle on their own. Besides, they have the bat signal, he doesn’t need to check in like that. They’ll be fine, honest.

Bruce wants to ask if the commissioner knows where his daughter is, if he’s seen her in the past week. He already knows the answer will be yes and yes. Babs is good like that, she doesn’t brood, she doesn’t take any time to obsess and reframe it as due diligence on tough cases. She gets on with it, she makes time.

“Such a shame they have to make them so tight but what can you do? Here you go, make a fist. See where the veins bulge up? So pretty. Pretty blue veins, I could just pop ‘em. And where you’re flexing these silly things look even smaller. Why, I reckon you could really scrape the skin off your arms if you were trying. What a sight that would be. Would you like that? I’d like that.”

Gritting his teeth, Bruce presses on. Till the screens blur together and everything looks green, white, purple. Red, red, red. There’s nothing that serious going on here but his gut tells him he needs to look closer. Sometimes you need to step back to see the full picture, usually you need to get right in before you notice all the details. He should head out, get his ear to the ground and his nose to the trail, follow every lead through to the bitter end. He is a detective first and foremost, he can do this, he should be doing it.

First he calls Nightwing to let him know that there will be minimal help coming from Batman that night. He can hear scepticism hiding behind trust when Nightwing answers, tells him that he understands his concerns but there’s nothing to suggest anything sinister going on here.

(But at least Nightwing answered. Dick always picks up the phone. There’s so much faith between the two of them, so many years. Bruce would not only trust him with his life, he’d trust him with the cowl, and that’s really saying something.)

One of the great advantages of trusting people is the ability to delegate without fear. Nightwing can save Gotham tonight, and Bruce will be back at it when he’s chased this down, hunted it to its bitter end. He must sound out of sorts, he can hear the trepidation in Dick’s voice, but neither of them goes so far as to mention it.

“Bet you won’t go telling your little birds about this, bet the tabloids never find out. God, that would be embarrassing. A one night stand turned celebrity power couple. You’d never hear the end of it, would you darling? It would totally undermine your image. Not to mention the scars you’d be left with, even leaving the cuffs aside. I have no intention of you leaving here unharmed. Yes of course you get to leave, sweetness. What do you take me for? Some kind of monster? Hahahahahahahahahaha!”

He tells Damien he’ll be heading out and is unsurprised when he receives little more than a half-hearted grunt in response. The newest Robin is closer to Bruce than the others. From the get go, he means. They’re all his kids if he wishes hard enough but Damien doesn’t get to dodge the bullet at any level. The downside of this is that the youngest Wayne is painfully aware of his privileged status and is not always willing to relax into it.

Bruce tries very hard to remember what it felt like to be ten years old and the heir to Wayne Enterprises, the sole inheritor of his family’s history. He’s sure he’s kept his spine ramrod straight since the day he learned to walk as a result of all that pressure, all those appearances he was expected to keep up. He’s never resented it, not even as a parentless teenager trying to navigate the audaciously invasive angle that the press took, while staying in their good books, but he can see why someone might.

Not _someone_ , Damien. And besides, it’s not as if his son is getting everything. Just the company and the house and the name and most of whatever’s left in the family vault. A glance at the books and Bruce Wayne would appear to be leaving everything to the boy, but it’s a piece of paper drawn up by a typically discrete lawyer and it doesn’t know everything. Least of all that Dick will get the cowl (if he wants it), Tim will get a one way ticket out of this life (as if he doesn’t have that anyway), Babs will get nothing (she doesn’t want anything), Alfred will get some peace (but he’ll be long gone).

And Jason will get a couple of footnotes in the history of Gotham – _one of the Robins died_. Any super criminals left alive when Bruce is gone can have the satisfaction of beating him, and he won’t be able to argue his way around it.

“My my, we are morbid today. I just want to see you smile, pet. Want to see those pretty eyes light up for me, do you think you can manage that? Not that our last get together wasn’t fun but you were so angry and you’re hard to pin down when you get like that. Literally, I mean. Not that I’m not strong, you know I am darling, but you’re a tour de force when aroused. Listen to me blabbing on I sound so ungrateful! Oh you mustn’t think I don’t appreciate it, I just want to see you all meek and docile for me, just for once. C’mon, big smile, or I’ll have to cut a new one right into your face”

Damien shifts on the couch like he might be about to say something, before returning to his books with a huff. Bruce steals out of the house through the cave and heads down into the city, marveling at the streetlights anew. He can practically smell the tension waiting to break, the way it does every night in Gotham. Someone is always up to something. This city hasn’t known peace since the ground was first broken by New England settlers almost four hundred years ago. If you listen hard enough you can tell from which direction the wind is blowing. It’s never good, but some storms hit harder than others.

The air is still, fog filled, polluted, unstable, calm as a millpond. Bruce has to hold his breath to feel for the tell-tale sign of criminal life lurking below the surface, picking away at the fabric of the night until it frays into malleable strands.

Except there’s nothing there. Gotham is laughing at him. Surely that’s clue enough.

Alfred cuts in every now and then with updates on the progress of minor criminals around the city. On a better night Bruce might have gone after them for want of anything better to do but this is serious. The scent of something familiar and firm is just out of reach, he’s sure of it. When he closes his eyes he can imagine the smell of something purple, and it so stirs the excitement building in his gut he can almost persuade himself it’s really there.

Grappling hook to the skies, leaping across rooftops. He passes Selina three times in an hour as they scout the same neighbourhoods. She probably thinks he’s gotten soft, or that she’s gotten faster, quicker, out of his league. Jim’s going to be upset about that, he still doesn’t believe the police can handle Catwoman, like she’s a metahuman or some such. They’re going to have to learn how to handle her sooner or later.

It’s still an unpleasant mental image, the GCPD helplessly wandering from room to room unable to give the victims anything more useful than the name of an uncommonly successful cat burglar. He hates to slow down, so sure that he’s on the verge of something significant, but for a moment, Bruce slows to call Tim.

Tim is reasonably placid with Selina. More importantly, Selina is uncommonly fond of Tim. She doesn’t need to be taken in, Bruce grumbles down the line, she just needs to know that she’s been spotted. She’ll almost certainly put everything back, even if she takes it again as soon as their backs are turned.

Bruce can hear Tim’s lips thinning, because of course he knows. Questions come hard and fast, why Batman can’t handle this seeing as Batman spotted it, and what is the point of being in the city if you’re not going to do your job properly?

Bruce explains still cities, no wind. Purple, green, white, red. Tim tells him he’s being paranoid but he doesn’t say he won’t come.

“You know how long I’ve been thinking about this? Man, I think I was born thinking about this. Really, I think the only thing I ever wanted with any reliability was to see what was underneath your skin. Hahahaha, no silly not your clothes. I’m gonna flay you, or at least part of you. Nice and slow, wanna see how it makes you feel. Oh baby! I wanna see you scream.”

There are two dozen cases of petty theft that night, at least double that for vandalism. By Gotham standards it’s a very easy night, no murders come in through the police or through Alfred. A couple of goons try to rob a bank but they don’t get very far with it. The worst thing on the streets tonight is Selina and she never comes out for long – cats sleep a lot, at all hours of the day.

If Batman goes to ground it is only ever with a purpose. Bruce ducks into alleyways to examine laughter graffitied on old brownstones and shop shutters. Sometimes it’s a face, beaming and bright, surveying the precious few who make use of shortcuts in this city, that will try to eat them whole in exchange for the privilege. It’s a surprisingly common motif, little shrines to chaos meant to guide the true believer into the underworld and far away. The part of Bruce’s brain that longs to form a superstitious foothold in an increasingly nonsensical world urges him to raise his hand to touch the red of the clown’s lips. He’s seen more than a few folk pay the same respects, criminal and law abiding citizen alike. When one of these symbols springs up it always winds up meaning something, even if the painter never meant it to.

Sometimes there are laugh lines running along the outside of buildings. Banks, libraries, the courthouse. Anywhere that the sound of laughter might feel particularly incongruous. Bruce knows for a fact that they are present at the foot of Blackgate, but not at Arkham. The letters are always written in a different hand, though their message remains the same. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…

You get used to it, someone out there is laughing at you, always. The laugh lines don’t lead anywhere, they’re just meant to unnerve and unsettle. Bruce almost forgets this, as he swoops in to take a closer look at the spray paint, not so freshly dried, skirting the base of an office block downtown. For a moment the urge to follow is overpowering, till he remembers that he has places to be and that the tension won’t snap without him.

When in doubt, start with the chemical processing plants on the very edge of the city, then the pharmaceutical packing plants. There are no military grade explosives hidden out here anymore, they moved production inland, somewhere where fewer unwanted hands would try to pry. It doesn’t stop the bomb threats pouring in every other month, but it has done wonders to Gotham’s crime stats nonetheless. Sometimes you have to ask yourself if this city is a magnet for villainy, or if it’s just that easy to go bad.

“Remember the first time we danced together? Can’t say I have much of a stomach for the memory but I suppose it was the beginning of an era. Here, try some of this. Picked it up back at the old homestead. C’mon, drink up! No need to cry about it it’s just a little acid. Goodness me, your stomach’s full of the stuff. I can show you if you like, there’s this neat thing you can do where you puncture the stomach and let your own enzymes eat you alive. Supposed to be horridly painful – doesn’t it sound fun? Well I think it sounds fun, maybe if you’re a very good boy I’ll let you get in on the action.”

There’s nothing to be found on the edge of the city. Nothing in the long abandoned houses that skirt Arkham, windows shattered and support beams staggered at odd angles, buckling under years of mutation caused by freshly escaped super villains. Bruce skulks through unsavoury neighbourhoods, letting his feet crack twigs and rustle broken glass, hoping that the sound will disturb something in the night. He’s so sure it’s going to be there, waiting round the next corner, grinning ear to ear.

He hasn’t heard anything from the others save the mindless chatter of a slow night. Nightwing turned in more than an hour ago, Red Robin seems to think he’s done as much as he can with Catwoman. Batgirl has been quiet, in that way Babs is always quiet when she knows she isn’t needed but is ready to go nonetheless. Alfred drifts in and out, sleep weighing heavy on his voice at this time of night. He shares traffic updates and any police news to be found, but there’s little to be reported. It doesn’t shake the dull certainty that something is coming, resting heavy in Bruce’s gut. He doesn’t know what’s worse, to be proven right and watch a madman try to take his city, or to be proven wrong.

Bruce is aware that it doesn’t look good to spend so much time on the trail of gut feelings. If he is wrong, this won’t be the first time he’s gone chasing after vague ideas of purple, green, white, red…maybe some mustard yellow thrown in for good measure. He’s not normally so obvious about it, but it happens. You can’t anticipate the actions of a person who does not have a clear motivation and it’s very easy to wind up over anticipating.

“You never even saw me coming, did you love? I know you like to prepare for our little get togethers but you’re so much more fun when I catch you unawares. I’ve been thinking, all this time and all those broken bones, you must have quite the story written on your ribcage. I wanna read it for you, wanna peel back the skin, squash you down. Wanna make you wonder why you bother anymore. I wanna…wanna…oh my”

For a long minute, Bruce considers calling Luke to see if he’s up for joining him on patrol. Batwing isn’t anything like as close to him as the others, which makes it easier to pretend that his suspicions are actually founded on something, and not just a poor excuse to practice his paranoia. But when he looks at the time it’s late beyond all imagining, and there’s no way he’s calling anyone out for anything but an emergency.

Gotham would speak to him if she were planning something, Bruce has to believe that much. Sometimes she speaks in painted smiles and laugh lines, sometimes she speaks in empty air, sometimes she speaks in honest to god mayhem but she speaks. He’s sure she has something to say, but whatever it is its too quiet for even a bat’s ears to pick up.

Once more round the city centre, which isn’t quiet exactly but it’s about as calm as it ever is. It’s been forty five minutes since Alfred chimed in with an update on the police force, and Bruce is aware that if he gets back to Wayne Manor within the hour, he might just catch enough sleep to fuel a productive day’s sleuthing in the morning. Shut away in the cave, pouring over video footage, everything he missed from tonight while he was too busy focusing on all the extraneous details.

Extraneous details are always what catches people out. If you want to learn to read the signs, you need to start with the bare minimum. Bruce stifles a yawn and heads home, out past the suburbs and into the hills surrounding the city, till Gotham is a glistening jewel below him. Silent, still, laughing at him behind his back. The silk of his sheets is soft where it’s frayed, the threads winding around his fingers, pulling him down, opening up the black curtains of the dreamsphere and sending Bruce headfirst into a nightmare of his own making.

 

 

 

Bruce dreams of The Joker, all smiles and laugh lines.

“Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Fancy seeing you here”

There’s a knife bearing down on Bruce. Slashing at his cheeks, stinging where his tongue comes up to worry the torn skin. It’s sharp and quick, yet dulled by the levels of abstraction his brain takes him through before he’s allowed to feel anything with any degree of certainty. He is free to move as he pleases, but his arms won’t do what he tells them to. They’re too heavy, his whole body is too heavy. Weighed down by his cape and his boots and his gauntlets. Ears strained and all he catches is a high pitched cackle bubbling up from the depths of the ground below.

This is a rooftop, or an alley. Maybe it’s the batcave. He can’t be sure because the world keeps shifting around him, or it’s too hard to focus on. The Joker is standing twenty feet away, except he’s so close Bruce can feel his breath on the newly formed gashes on his cheeks.

The Joker leans in far enough to lick along the cuts. It must have been his knife that did it, right when Bruce’s attention slipped. His tongue feels like lye burning against the wound, scalding where he stops to suck, like Bruce’s blood is his mother’s milk.

That’s not right, The Joker is standing on the other side of the city with a detonator in his hands, his fingers are curled into the broken bricks of an abandoned warehouse, caressing his own smile painted back at him. Blessed chaos, holding him firm, shining bright in the night.

I don’t want to be here. Bruce thinks it as hard as he can, his mouth doesn’t move, his arms don’t move. He’s not sure he’s standing any more. Why am I here?

“There are four hundred and fifty nine reasons to be anywhere else but here.” The Joker laughs. His voice singsongs, carrying all the way across the city, or hisses straight into Bruce’s ear. “Reasons. Real reasons.”

The only thought that manages to cross Bruce’s mind is that that number is far too specific. Of course it is, that’s the point. But The Joker grabs him by the chin, pulls him into a standing position (Bruce doesn’t know when he sat down), forces their faces together till there’s nowhere to look but into the depths of those acid green eyes, too familiar. He doesn’t want to know.

“Count them on one hand, squash them down till they fit between your fingers, till they don’t look like something worth sacrificing your dignity for.” The Joker says, so close Bruce could swallow the words. He feels the dull weight of his fingers, unmoving as he tries to count, tries to squash. For a glorious moment The Joker vanishes and he is free to snoop around corners, following signs that only he can see.

Except he’s not out in the city, he’s stuck at the bottom of a well with nowhere to turn. The Joker is down there with him, purple and green mingling in the water as he grabs Bruce’s right hand and forces apart the fingers, sets them at one hundred and eighty degree angles to each other. They don’t crack when they should, nothing ever does down here. Not Bruce’s head, not his resolve.

He’s been here before, he’s sure of that, even more sure that The Joker’s been here with him. Helping him count, making space for all the things he doesn’t want to see.

“Breathe in deep, hold them in,” The Joker coos, “it’s really not so hard you silly goose you’ve just got to want it bad enough.”

Bruce tries to flex his fingers and nothing happens. The Joker’s face darkens and they are standing on a rooftop, in the middle of the day. All of Gotham can see them, standing dumb as The Joker pulls out a pair of handcuffs and locks Bruce’s wrists together. “You’re overthinking things, here, let me get that for you. Such a shame they have to make them so tight but what can you do? Here you go, make a fist. See where the veins bulge up? So pretty. Pretty blue veins, I could just pop ‘em. And where you’re flexing these silly things look even smaller. Why, I reckon you could really scrape the skin off your arms if you were trying.”

The Joker’s hands are on him, running up his arms, tracing patterns in Bruce’s blood. It’s blue, which is wrong, he’s sure. But the senses don’t lie. The air up here is so still and when he concentrates he can focus on specific details. The way the sun isn’t quite bright enough to blind, and the bricks on the roof have been laid too perfectly, too clean. It could almost be Metropolis.

Bruce screws up his eyes and concentrates on seeing into The Joker’s mind. Past the layers of manic laughter and boundless rage to where blood sits eternally on his brain. Slashing, biting, consuming. Within the mess is buried an idea, the idea that he could take the knife in his hand and plunge it into Bruce’s gut. He could do it again and again until there was no Batman, just blood. “What a sight that would be. Would you like that? I’d like that”

Unhelpful as ever, Bruce’s brain turns the idea over, imagines how much it would hurt, thinks about The Joker diving in to drink from his decaying flesh. He hates it, hates everything about it. The Joker’s eyes flash in triumph, he reaches down between them and-

There’s nothing sexual about this, this is a nightmare. The Joker’s mind is filled with blood, his mouth is filled with blood, his hands are already tearing at Bruce’s flesh, hitting the switch on a detonator, painting smiles in places no one’s laughed in many a year. Yet the Batman is hard, aching. Tied up and unable to move and just longing for the tension to snap. Who needs calm when you could have a storm?

This is not an unfamiliar dream of his, this is not an unusual turn for it to take. Bruce tries to fight it every time and every time his brain feeds him images of awful things. His skin rotting before his eyes, his bones exposed and it does nothing. The Joker runs hands up his thighs, cuts away the fabric of the batsuit to pinch at his skin. It is dark and they are on a rooftop, they are in an alley, they are at the bottom of a well where purple, green, white all blur into one.

“Bet you won’t go telling your little birds about this, bet the tabloids never find out. God, that would be embarrassing. A one night stand turned celebrity power couple. You’d never hear the end of it, would you darling? It would totally undermine your image. Not to mention the scars you’d be left with, even leaving the cuffs aside. I have no intention of you leaving here unharmed. Yes of course you get to leave, sweetness. What do you take me for?” The Joker’s teeth shine in the moonlight, long fangs that Bruce is sure he doesn’t have in real life. He settles in Bruce’s lap and presses against him, because this is the sort of dream where they are always as excited as each other. “Some kind of monster? Hahahahahahahahahaha!”

An image of Selina flashes across Bruce's eyes and The Joker rips it away physically, hacks it to death, drowns it in the water of the well. He laughs and he laughs and he laughs, “no room for the kitty cat!” and he scratches his name into the back of Bruce’s hand. There are too many limbs and too many eyes, creeping up on him, pinning him down. He still can’t move. He's screaming or he is whispering or his voice exists on a plain that is only audible to The Joker. The words are immaterial, but the message is one of helpless rage, a story of the city falling down around their ears. 

The Joker is still laughing, it's the best joke he's ever heard. Bruce understands why it's funny but can't bring himself to laugh, or he laughs but he doesn't get the joke. He thinks maybe someone explained it to him many years ago, he thinks it sounded like bullets. 

“My my, we are morbid today. I just want to see you smile, pet." The Joker's thumb traces the corner or Bruce's mouth, smearing the blood from the cuts across his cheeks.

Except the cuts are no longer deep, they are a surface level abrasion, and there is so much more to be done before the night will let him go. "Want to see those pretty eyes light up for me, do you think you can manage that? Not that our last get together wasn’t fun but you were so angry and you’re hard to pin down when you get like that. Literally, I mean. Not that I’m not strong, you know I am darling, but you’re a tour de force when aroused." The Joker's hands are underneath the suit, trailing tortuously light touches along the hard line of Bruce's cock. His grin speaks dances that have never seen the end of the music, of every secluded corner of Gotham they have ever visited together when no one else was paying enough attention to catch them at it. "Listen to me blabbing on, I sound so ungrateful! Oh you mustn’t think I don’t appreciate it, I just want to see you all meek and docile for me, just for once. C’mon, big smile, or I’ll have to cut a new one right into your face”

Two slashes, and his cheeks are hanging wide open once again. This is a nightmare, Bruce is shaking with something between fear and desire that tastes an awful lot like both. Blood seeps from his cheeks and he tastes it on The Joker’s tongue. He’s not sure if they’re supposed to be the same person or if he’s being kissed, but neither seems particularly possible when The Joker is doing cartwheels around him, uncommonly flexible as he launches into a triple backflip, holds out a hand for Bruce to take. “You know how long I’ve been thinking about this? Man, I think I was born thinking about this."

They are going to dance the night away, till their feet are worn down to the muscle and every step is agony. The Joker's eyes are heavy with anticipation, eager to start, eager to place the two of them in an unending limbo that they will never truly break free from. "Really, I think the only thing I ever wanted with any reliability was to see what was underneath your skin. Hahahaha, no silly not your clothes. I’m gonna flay you, or at least part of you. Nice and slow, wanna see how it makes you feel. Oh baby! I wanna see you scream.”

There will be time for flaying later. They are in an alley and Bruce is on his feet, his hands are bound together by cuffs that dig into his skin, The Joker is gripping him by the biceps and laughing and laughing and laughing. The music starts up, something slow and theatrical, played a semitone out of tune. Bruce knows all the moves to this dance, he has done it on so many nights prior to this, in his dreams and in the flesh. He dodges knife strokes and grenades, gets on his knees and prays to the God of sweet chaos, lets The Joker lead when they waltz.

“Remember the first time we danced together? Can’t say I have much of a stomach for the memory but I suppose it was the beginning of an era.” They speak with the same mouth, The Joker’s grin so wide his skin might split open. Then Bruce is being backed against a wall in a lab, in a chemical plant, in a cell at Arkham as his jaws are forced open to take a feeding tube.

The Joker pinches Bruce’s nose, “Here, try some of this. Picked it up back at the old homestead. C’mon, drink up! No need to cry about it it’s just a little acid. Goodness me, your stomach’s full of the stuff. I can show you if you like, there’s this neat thing you can do where you puncture the stomach and let your own enzymes eat you alive. Supposed to be horridly painful – doesn’t it sound fun? Well I think it sounds fun, maybe if you’re a very good boy I’ll let you get in on the action.”

Knife in his gut, again and again. It’s happening and it is not happening, the building is burning around them. The Joker is nowhere and he is draining Bruce of everything he has. On his knees, sucking at the open wounds that even now, his internal organs are spilling from.

Sucking his cock. No, not that

“Yesssssss,” The Joker hisses. Pushes him down, gags, bites hard enough to bleed. Bruce’s hands can’t move, the Batman doesn’t want him to move. There is a smile painted on the tiles across the wall and every patient at the asylum touches their hand to the teeth on their way back to their cells. They stop and stare, jumpsuits burning with the building, they see blood and acid and red red red.

They are in a bed, silk sheets twisted up around them, making it hard to bleed. The fabric frays but doesn’t give and Bruce is still achingly hard, his stomach is open and his cheeks reduced to ugly red gashes. The Joker twists fingers into the torn flesh of his abdomen, pulling away chunks of flesh and tearing into them with his teeth that are far too long, eating him alive. Bruce’s cock still hard enough to hurt, still bleeding, The Joker still sucking him off between mouthfuls of flesh.

“You never even saw me coming, did you love?” The Joker pants. Bruce doesn’t know what they’re talking about anymore. They are in a well, they are on a rooftop, they are in a bed, the world is on fire. They have never been apart. The Joker is as far away from him as it is possible for a person to be. 

Bruce is going to come very soon, right in the clown’s mouth. His semen is going to mingle with the blood on that red tongue, and they’re both going to scream.

Colours start to unstitch, they are everywhere and nowhere. The Joker is green hair, purple suit (maybe just a little mustard yellow thrown in for luck), white skin red lips. Everything is red.

The Joker laughs like nails on a blackboard, “I know you like to prepare for our little get togethers but you’re so much more fun when I catch you unawares. I’ve been thinking, all this time and all those broken bones, you must have quite the story written on your ribcage.” His hands rip back more of Bruce’s flesh, exposing his spleen, his liver, his lungs, “I wanna read it for you, wanna peel back the skin, squash you down.” His mouth is on Bruce’s cock and they are in an alley and it’s raining and the city doesn’t know they are there. “Wanna make you wonder why you bother anymore.”

There are no words for the agony when The Joker smashes open his ribs, or for the bright light that sparks behind his eyelids when he comes. It seems unending, Bruce waits for his body to come back to him so he can fight this off, pick himself up and put himself back together but he has no luck. They are dancing together in the ballroom of Wayne Manor while the band plays a tango that for once in his life he knows all the steps to. He’s bleeding on the hardwood floors, Alfred frantically cleaning up after him, The Joker squirming in his arms as he writhes through the gore, laughing and laughing and laughing, “I wanna…wanna…oh my”

The night stills, goes completely black. Bruce faces off against The Joker in the dark, smiling at him, reaching out to try and grab him, his fingers closing over smoke every time. The smoke is purple, green, white, yellow, red.

 

 

 

The human brain is capable of bizarre feats of logic. On winter mornings, you don’t need to draw the curtains to know if it has snowed. The light is different, and the world is quieter, as if ice were the great soundproofing material of the universe. Or at altitude, you don’t need to look down to know you are up, regardless of how many mountains cut across the skyline. Gothamites have another sense, not dissimilar, they don’t need to turn on the news to know that disaster has struck.

It’s far too late when Bruce starts awake, disentangles himself from his sheets and makes for the door. He can feel dried semen lining the front of the boxer shorts he slept in, cacky and uncomfortable and entirely inappropriate for anything ever. He stops at the door, takes a steadying breath and manages to force himself to change into something less conspicuous before he has to greet the day. Or Alfred.

(Alfred probably knows. He does all of Bruce’s laundry and he’s…well he’s Alfred. He’s far too polite to say anything but he’s got a good mind for putting things two and two together).

Bruce grabs his phone, opens up a live TV broadcast just to feel his stomach drop when he is presented with the burned out wreckage of a housing tenement in the lower east end of Gotham. It looks to be a gas explosion, something that happened in the wee small hours of the morning. Something he missed.

Alfred shuffles in ten minutes later with bad news and breakfast. The police are saying it’s an accident, Babs is saying it’s anything but and Bruce is inclined to believe her. He tries to pin down where he was last night, if this is due to distraction or carelessness. Every time he closes his eyes he is rewarded with the image of a smile, too vividly real to be painted onto a back alley wall.

He takes a deep breath and tries to pretend he doesn’t know Alfred is watching him.

The hard part is running through all the other options, reassuring Dick that no, this definitely doesn’t signal the return of Bane. And no, Tim doesn’t need to worry about The Riddler and Harley Quinn teaming up anytime soon. He knows that they know what he’s going to say, and they’re going to tell him he could be wrong, that it doesn’t make sense when he spends so much time hunting down the clown – it’s preposterous to think that anything would slip by him.

They won’t call him obsessed, not to his face, not as a group. That would feel uncomfortably like an intervention that none of them are ready for. Maybe later, when the world is quiet and Bruce can be sure that his suspicions are unfounded. He dives into the cave and sets to work, calls Jim Gordon, starts to see the ways in which multiple petty thefts and an attempted bank robbery could be strung into a recipe for a bomb planted out of site in someone’s basement. He tells himself he’s not going to let this happen again, though there’s a lump in his throat waiting to hear about the next attack.

“You never even saw me coming, did you love?”

Bruce’s head snaps up to a screen in the right hand corner of his vision. The Joker stares back at him, smiling wide enough to break. He is resplendent in purple, green, white, red (no yellow this time).

All the world melts away, till it’s just the two of them, in the cave, racing against time to take the city back. Bruce’s fingers fly over the keys even as he reaches for the cowl. He closes his eyes and sees teeth flash in the light of the moon, bearing down on him through the dark, ready to eat him alive.

**Author's Note:**

> I came out to explore the possibility of BatJokes and I accidentally wrote vore. Incredible. 
> 
> Comments make me jump for joy. Come find me on [tumblr](http://jeffersonhairpie.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/chadfuture_).


End file.
